


Time heals all wounds

by cupiscent



Category: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-13
Updated: 2010-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's starting to think he's no longer the same man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time heals all wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Immediately post-movie. Not so much explicit spoilers as an in-built expectation that you know what happened. This is not even slightly the angst I set out to write.

With her fingers upon his, light as bird, she says, "Marrying me will not give you Alamut, Persian. You can tell your brothers that. I am not a silly girl whose head will be turned by any of this, not sufficient to forget who and what you are."

His turn to stop, and hers to face him. "Any of what?"

"Returning this." She lifts the dagger in her other fist, filigree sparkling between her knuckles. She waves it in his direction. "An air of mystery. A pretty face and prettier manners. Any of that."

Her chin's up, her manner imperious, and she's so blindingly familiar that he can stop neither the clench of his heart nor the twist of his smirk. "Pretty, am I?" he says, before he can say something worse.

She's just as impossible to throw off-balance as she ever was, merely tilting her head a little to the side, considering him with that stark gaze that had made him feel too big and loud and dirty. Now he just wonders what it is she thinks she sees. "You might be," she proclaims. "Were you clean-shaven."

Which is why, when the door to his chamber knocks open that afternoon, his brothers find him with soap lather upon his face, a towel around his shoulders, a polished silver mirror propped against a vase, a blade against his skin. Bis said - in between declarations that Dastan had lost his mind - that he could get someone to do this for him, but Dastan feels that the last person he wants near his throat with a knife is a professional.

"By the gods," Garsiv declares grandly, as he kicks the door closed behind them, "he's so terrified of marriage he's decided to become a woman."

Wiping suds off his face still leaves Dastan one hand free to make a rude gesture over his shoulder. When he turns around, Tus is leaning thoughtfully against one pillar of the ridiculous tent-sized bed they've given him in this apartment. "Well," he comments, "it's not like he could ever scare up much of a beard in the first place."

"Fuck you too," Dastan declares, even as Garsiv returns with, "But a true Persian wouldn't let a little defeat stand in his way."

"I'm not going to be Persian, am I?" Dastan says pointedly, tossing the towel into the basin of water (just as cold and clear as she promised). "I'm going to be Prince Consort of Alamut."

"You've earned it." Tus's gaze is measuring. Garsiv leans a shoulder against the pillar, half behind their oldest brother, and Dastan has been expecting this visit, his brothers' eyes on him, Tus saying, steady and deliberate: "Brother, explain to us what we have done this day."

What they have done this day. An uncle dead, and never mind that it was Tus's hand upon the weapon of his end, it is all of them who bear that crime. Maybe he should have done that differently, spared his brothers somehow, but Dastan has never known how to keep quiet about how he sees the world.

He doesn't think he can even start with all of that, so he tries, "How did I know what father told you?"

"Amongst other things," Tus returns evenly.

"Would you believe you told me?" he offers, grinning wildly but not (especially to them) convincingly. "That night outside Zabul when they brought out that rice wine and--" He's interrupted by Garsiv's laughter.

Tus elbows Garsiv in the chest, his smile curving even he says, "No, I wouldn't," and Dastan hadn't actually expected him to, really.

They are his brothers. When he thought they had betrayed him, he was hollowed out by scourging grief and anger, emotions he'd seen echoed back in every furious line of Garsiv's assault upon him, the cold shock of Tus's stare. And they'd believed him - once when he'd proven it, but that had been the time he'd also run rather than trust them; the second time implicitly, when he'd let them. Both times they covered his back. Saved him.

He tells them. It's the least he owes them.

They interrupt a few times, to ask questions, and on one occasion for Garsiv to snort and declare that he mustn't have really been _trying_ to kill Dastan, in that case. But there's a twist to his mouth, and Dastan hears the apology. They look disbelieving a time or two, but never voice it, and it fades as he continues. Is replaced by concern and sympathy. He has told them tales before, magnificent fabrications, but they have always been able to pick him at it.

When he finishes, Tus grips his shoulder, steadying. Garsiv has a frown on his face, and says thoughtfully, "This medallion..."

No, Dastan hasn't quite told them _all_ of the truth. They are his brothers, but they are only human. He left out as much of Tamina's involvement as he could, made the agent of the sands' use something other than a knife. His brothers are intelligent men, especially Tus. So had Nizam been. Dastan's seen how the promise of the Dagger can overcome an intelligent man's reason.

"Garsiv," Tus says, quellingly.

"Tus," Garsiv shoots back, pointedly. "This thing _can't_ fall into the wrong hands, especially if the Hassansins are active and rogue. You say you left it on the messenger."

Dastan had said that. "Long gone now," Tus suggests. "Looted, stolen, changing hands right now down in the city somewhere."

"He'd know it if he saw it again, though," Garsiv counters, pointing at Dastan.

Who says, "No." Not loudly, but there must be something in his voice to make both of them stop, turn, look at him. Dastan takes a breath. "I watched you both die. I watched our father die. I lost everything. This is _all_ I ask: let it disappear."

Garsiv wants to argue further, Dastan knows it like breathing, but they've both presented their cases now, and there's nothing left to do but watch Tus. After a long moment, he nods, and Garsiv snorts. He says, "That and being Prince Consort of Alamut."

It doesn't matter; the tension's left his shoulders, and Dastan knows his brothers will respect his wishes on this. They'll argue until they lose their voices and dawn leaches across the desert, but Tus's is the decision that matters. "Hey," Dastan says, "I never asked for that, you pair forced it on me."

"But you want it," Garsiv declares, sure as he is about everything.

"Or _her_," Tus adds, a smile dancing across his mouth now, widening as Dastan clears his throat. "I think our brother may have left some things out of his fanciful tale."

"Get out," Dastan insists, raising his voice to be heard over Garsiv's laughter. "I have to finish violating my Persian heritage."

At dinner, later that night, Tamina runs her fingertips along his denuded jaw. Dastan can't look around, in case he catches one of his brother's eyes and both of them burst out laughing, so he watches her instead, which may be a bad idea for a different reason; her face is soft and thoughtful, her eyes following the path of her touch, and his skin is already over-sensitive from the passage of the blade. Her thumbnail grazes his bottom lip, and maybe his breath does something strange, or maybe there's another reason why her gaze jumps up to meet his suddenly. Too suddenly. He doesn't have time to even think about what he might be showing, let alone censor it. She colours slightly, leans away from him again, reaching for a mango.

He misses her so badly, for one blinding moment. She is close beside him, perfumed and soft, and entirely lost to him.

"I realise," she says quietly, and he shakes his head to clear it, to focus on her, here and now. Her hands are deft with the fruit, filleting it with a small, sharp knife, getting no juice on her robes or her fingers. "I may have seemed ungrateful about the return of the," a momentary pause that he might not even notice, were he not waiting to know how she will name the implement, "sacrificial knife. It's just that I didn't think I was going to see it again. I was sending it from the city, to keep it from your grasp, but you breached the walls so fast..."

She trails off, setting down the eviscerated mango. And that is his fault as well, getting the eastern gates open too soon. He wonders if she knows that, thinks she probably does. The troops have been completely baffled by the unexpected way this victory has turned out, but they know a victory when they win one, and how to boast about those who made it possible. Loudly. They're still calling him the Lion of Persia. Some things, it seems, _are_ destiny.

"I cursed myself for taking too long," Tamina resumes, so quietly now that Dastan has to lean in to hear her over the noise of the rest of the diners. She turns a little toward him, but only a little, her eyes still downcast. "I swore to the gods that I would never hesitate again."

And she hadn't: grabbing his hand and leaping from the balcony; seizing his sword and swinging, the tip sizzling across his chest; striding forward to give her life for mankind.

Except that... "Now the dagger has been returned to me," she says, and lifts her gaze to his. "I am not sure what to make of this."

Neither is he. He has partially unmade the girl with whom he saved the world. He smiles weakly. "Maybe I'm an agent of destiny."

She arches an eyebrow, and at least that's familiar. "Maybe you're a Persian thug who capitalises on fortune," she says, but it's not quite as bitter as he's heard her be.

She has not, after all, witnessed her city destroyed, nor felt Persia's booted foot quite as heavily upon her neck. She has not been escorted anywhere by a phalanx of armed men and a sarcastic, conquering prince. She has not come within a moment of death. She is not in more desperate fear of the consequences of her failed duty than a princess of such a soft city can ever have dreamt she might be.

"Maybe I'm both." His tone's a little too flat, and Dastan makes an effort to grin, and wink at her, and steal a slice of mango from her plate. It's sweet and he's not nearly as graceful as she is, having to suck juice from his thumb. When she rolls her eyes, laughing isn't an effort at all.

And he doesn't tell her. He thinks perhaps he's waiting for the right moment, because launching in too soon with the wild tales and declarations of destined love is actually not a good idea. (His brothers would disagree; Garsiv favours the wild tales and Tus the declarations of love, and all of their wives have been political arrangements. Dastan's just saying.)

At the conclusion of the meal, she accepts his hand and his escort back to her quarters; just him, the pair of armed men tailing them unlikely to be mistaken for anything but an honour guard. At the door of her suite, she reclaims her hand with perfect poise, her gaze cool as she thanks him, calls him _prince_.

"Tamina," he says, stepping forward even as she turns away, and when she whirls back, there's surprise in her eyes, and a tiny spark of pleasure, quickly muted. He remembers a hundred other ways in which she has looked upon him, and realises that none of them will ever happen, not quite in the same way. She does not remember it. Even if he wishes she did, telling her will not change that.

He'd rather lose her entirely than have her love him because he's told her she did once.

Instead, he says, "You still haven't actually responded to my proposal."

Nothing has changed about the way she holds herself, as though she were just as tall as he, and knew twice as much to boot. "You," she responds, with a smirk of her own, "have not actually issued one."

He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. She has a point. For so much of his life, Dastan has been willing to go along with the way Tus has said things will be, but he's rather promised that he will stop that. Promised himself, promise his father. He takes her hand again, to tug her a little closer, and she lets herself be drawn, the arch tilt of her chin undone somewhat by the soft pleasedness that tugs at the corners of her mouth. It's not a look he's seen on her, too relaxed and too carefree, and it takes his breath away for all of those reasons. "Princess," he says, making it the endearment she turned it into when he wasn't looking. "I may not be a prince by birth, but allow me to be yours by marriage, and I'll count my life perfectly fulfilled."

"I was right," she notes, smile unfurling, and she lifts her free hand to curl a finger beneath his cold, bare chin. "_Very_ pretty." The finger taps the end of his nose, and she adds, "I'll think about it," before withdrawing into her rooms with one last, brilliant smile over her shoulder.

His brothers are loitering just around the corner. Dastan almost falls over Garsiv's long damn legs, staggering exaggeratedly and clutching at Tus's shoulder. Just the sight of them hits him with brand new joy, the fact that they're _here_, Tus laughing in his ear, Garsiv making mock of his grace, adding, "And that was the most revolting spectacle I've ever had the misfortune to witness - count your life fulfilled? _Infant_, have we taught you nothing?"

There's the spiced scent of alcohol from the pitcher of wine they've been sharing as they waited here, and they are _here_, solid and alive beneath the arm Dastan has over Tus's shoulder, against the fist he leans over to drive into Garsiv's side. Alive and victorious and free, for this moment, from danger. Not bleeding, not losing the lustre from their eyes while he watches, not torn from him.

There's something warm lodged in his chest, as he levers away from Tus, grabs the pitcher from Garsiv as his brother's still whining about unsporting strikes. The feeling could be drunkenness, but the wine he tips mostly over his own face, thanks to his brothers' jostling, is the first he's consumed that evening. He sprays the mouthful he manages in Garsiv's face, then mostly lets Tus pull him away as Garsiv bellows and goes for him.

"You two," Tus huffs, getting an elbow between them, well-practiced at this. "Killing each other or burning the damned kingdom down."

Dastan catches Garsiv's eyes, and they don't even need a signal to turn on Tus instead, getting him completely off the floor in an instant, Garsiv pinning his arms, Dastan restraining his kicking legs. There is, he recalls aloud, a fountain beneath that balcony at the end of the corridor, though after that mention Tus struggles so much it really is going to be a challenge to get him off it.

The something is still there, blooming like a well-tended forge, warming him through, even after Tus kicks him so hard in the stomach he's seeing stars. Not drunkenness, he realises, but contentment. Probably not the first time he's ever felt it, but perhaps the first time in a number of years he hasn't taken it for granted. He isn't, indeed, the same man who pried this city open like a nut. Certainly not the same man who loved her and lost her. That man was cracked open himself by grief, by anger, by betrayal and torment. This man, here, shouting on a balcony of the palace of Alamut, has a heart being rapidly made whole by the passage of time, in a wholly different direction. He has his brothers - and their father will arrive soon, to no waiting brother with a poisonous heart - and none of what he knows will matter for the life he can build from here.

All three of them end up in the fountain, sodden and laughing and scaring the horses. The Princess Tamina comes out onto her own balcony to shout down well-spoken invective on the manners of Persians. Garsiv mutters suggestions for how Dastan might shut her up, until Tus holds him under, and Dastan just floats, grinning at the moon.


End file.
